Paid Marketing Consulting

How I audit a paid advertising account

Most engagements start with an audit of existing accounts, because the quickest improvements usually come from fixing what is already running. I review accounts with read access and work through a consistent checklist.

• Conversion tracking: which actions are counted as conversions, whether they fire correctly, whether duplicates exist and whether micro-actions are inflating results.
• Account structure: how campaigns and ad groups are organized, and whether budgets follow business priorities.
• Targeting: search terms, match types and negatives on Google; audiences, exclusions and placements on LinkedIn and Meta.
• Bidding: whether automated bid strategies have the right signal and enough data to work with.
• Ads and landing pages: message match, offer clarity, page speed and form friction.
• Lead handling: what happens after a form is submitted, how fast sales follow up and whether outcomes are recorded.

The output is a prioritized findings document. Each issue is explained in business terms, with the recommended fix and an indication of effort. Some fixes take minutes; others, such as offline conversion tracking, need coordination with your CRM and sales team. Either way, you see the full picture before deciding what to change, and whether you want me to implement or advise your team.

Why B2B paid campaigns often underperform

The most common problem I see is not the ads themselves. It is what happens around them. Campaigns optimize for form submissions, but many of those leads are unqualified. Sales follow up slowly or not at all. Nobody connects CRM outcomes back to the campaigns that generated them. Budgets are then set on platform-reported numbers that have little to do with revenue.

Fixing this means treating paid marketing as part of the business process, not a separate activity. I look at the whole chain:

• Who you are trying to reach and what offer makes sense at each stage
• Which keywords, audiences and placements reach those people
• Whether landing pages answer their questions and make the next step easy
• How leads are captured, routed and followed up in the CRM
• Whether qualified and closed outcomes are measured and fed back to ad platforms

When these pieces connect, you can make budget decisions based on which campaigns produce real opportunities. When they do not, even well-written ads struggle to show value. This process view comes from my broader work in CRM consulting and business process consulting, and it is what sets this service apart from pure media buying.

Connecting ad platforms to your CRM

Ad platforms optimize toward whatever signal you give them. If the only signal is a form submission, they will find more people who fill in forms, whether or not they ever buy. Feeding back offline conversions from your CRM changes that. When a lead becomes qualified, turns into an opportunity or closes, that event is sent back to Google Ads, LinkedIn or Meta, and bidding can learn which clicks lead to real business.

Setting this up properly involves capturing click identifiers or matching data at form submission, storing them against the lead in your CRM, defining which lifecycle stages count as conversions, and sending them back on a reliable schedule or through an integration. It also requires attention to consent and privacy rules in the markets where you advertise.

I work with CRMs such as Zoho CRM, HubSpot and Salesforce, and I design the data flow with your sales team so lifecycle stages are used consistently. Without consistent stages, offline conversion data becomes noisy and unreliable. If your CRM itself needs work first, that is often the best place to start, and my system integration work covers the technical connections.

Paid campaigns also work better alongside SEO and a structured lead generation process, so I plan them together where it makes sense.

Choosing the right channels: Google, Meta and LinkedIn

Each ad platform reaches buyers at a different moment, and B2B budgets are rarely large enough to do everything well. Choosing channels deliberately matters more than being present everywhere.

For most B2B businesses I start where intent is highest, usually search, then add LinkedIn when the target audience is well defined and the deal size justifies its cost. Meta can work well for some B2B offers, particularly those aimed at owner-managed businesses.

Each channel has its own service page with more detail: Google Ads management, LinkedIn Ads management and Meta Ads management. Whatever the mix, all channels report into the same CRM-based measurement so they can be compared fairly.

Deliverables and how campaigns are measured

Depending on whether I run campaigns, rebuild them or advise your team, deliverables usually include:

• A channel and campaign plan tied to target audiences, offers and budget priorities.
• A tracking plan covering conversions, UTM conventions, click identifiers and CRM fields.
• Campaign builds or restructures, with documented naming conventions.
• Landing page recommendations or briefs for each main offer.
• A reporting dashboard that combines ad platform data with CRM outcomes.

Measurement uses a funnel of KPIs rather than a single number. At the top: impressions, click-through rate and cost per click, which show whether ads reach the right people. In the middle: conversion rate and cost per lead, which show whether landing pages and offers work. At the bottom, and most important: cost per qualified lead, cost per opportunity, pipeline value and closed revenue by campaign, all taken from the CRM.

Platform-reported conversions are useful for day-to-day optimization, but budget decisions are based on CRM outcomes. That is the difference between knowing which ads get clicks and knowing which ads produce customers. I do not promise specific results, because they depend on your market, offer and sales process, but I make sure you can always see what is working.